My Full Make.com Blueprint For Automating a Sheets → OpenAI → Ghost Content Pipeline
I wired my entire content pipeline into Make.com so a single row in Google Sheets turns into a published Ghost post. Here is the exact scenario, module by module.
Tags
AI
Letting AI refactor one legacy stylesheet
I pointed an AI model at a 1,200-line legacy Sass file and asked it to refactor everything to Tailwind. The useful part was mechanical syntax cleanup. The risky part was everything that depended on design, layout, and accessibility intent.
A tiny script that adds my internal links
A 40-line Python script adds internal links to my Ghost drafts via a shell alias. It is crude, fast, and only saves minutes, which is exactly why it works.
Three things I delete from almost every AI draft
When I use AI for first drafts, I spend most of my editing time deleting: fake origin stories, forced AI angles, and tidy morals the model invented for me.
The Hour I Lost to a Plausible AI Debugging Answer
A confident AI diagnosis of a React Native hydration issue sent me refactoring the wrong layer for 45 minutes. The real bug was a string "null" in the API.
What My Automated Archive Exposed About My Writing
Reading a batch of AI-written posts in my Ghost archive made the patterns obvious: recycled transitions, invented habits, generic intros, fake closure, and why even a few real notes change the result.
CSS
Letting AI refactor one legacy stylesheet
I pointed an AI model at a 1,200-line legacy Sass file and asked it to refactor everything to Tailwind. The useful part was mechanical syntax cleanup. The risky part was everything that depended on design, layout, and accessibility intent.
Content breakpoints for a single hero component
A category hero only started working once its breakpoints came from the heading, cards, and nav, not from tablet and phone widths.
Why I Still Hand‑Code Every Hover State
I still hand-code every hover state instead of trusting component libraries. Not because I like pain, but because that tiny interaction layer decides how the site actually feels.
The CSS Specificity Bug That Wasted 3 Hours And Needed 1 Line
A real CSS specificity war story from a client project: three hours of confusion, one stubborn layout bug, and a single-line fix that solved it.
CSS Variables in the Age of AI: Letting Models Design Your Themes
I stopped hand-tuning every color token and let AI generate theme palettes on top of CSS variables. The result: faster theming, fewer regressions, and weirder experiments.
CSS Flexbox For Adaptive Fitness Dashboards That Don’t Suck On Mobile
How I use Flexbox to keep a workout dashboard readable when the data gets weird and the layout has to adapt on the fly. Practical patterns from a real fitness tracking UI.
Frontend
My Full Make.com Blueprint For Automating a Sheets → OpenAI → Ghost Content Pipeline
I wired my entire content pipeline into Make.com so a single row in Google Sheets turns into a published Ghost post. Here is the exact scenario, module by module.
The layout bug that vanished when I changed the copy
A two-column product layout broke only at 1120px wide. The fix was not new CSS, but rewriting one overstuffed feature sentence so the browser could finally wrap it.
Content breakpoints for a single hero component
A category hero only started working once its breakpoints came from the heading, cards, and nav, not from tablet and phone widths.
Why I Prototype Motion Before Polishing Layout
Static layouts can look perfect and still refuse to move. By prototyping motion early, spacing, hierarchy and components evolve around how the interface actually behaves.
The Hour I Lost to a Plausible AI Debugging Answer
A confident AI diagnosis of a React Native hydration issue sent me refactoring the wrong layer for 45 minutes. The real bug was a string "null" in the API.
The frontend code I deliberately keep boring
One feature taught me that a neat React state machine was less valuable than three plain useState hooks, and it changed how I choose boring frontend code.
Productivity
The Make automation that was slower than manual
A Make scenario that cross-posted Ghost articles to Dev.to looked efficient. API churn, broken canonicals, bad timing, and key exposure made manual faster.
A tiny script that adds my internal links
A 40-line Python script adds internal links to my Ghost drafts via a shell alias. It is crude, fast, and only saves minutes, which is exactly why it works.
A publishing system is not a writing system
Automation can move your words into Ghost with perfect formatting. It cannot notice what mattered this week or decide whether it is true.
Why my posts now start with five bullets
I stopped asking my automation to invent posts from topics and started feeding it five ugly bullets from real life instead. The system did not change much, but the writing did.
The Most Productive 15 Minutes Of My Day: Folding Laundry At Night
My most useful daily habit is not an app, a supplement, or a new framework. It is folding laundry at night, on purpose, every single day.
Killing CalendarBridge and RankPill: An Honest Audit of My Setapp Stack
I killed CalendarBridge and RankPill, then audited my entire Setapp stack. This is how I trimmed the bloat without losing any real capability.
Biohacking
A Month of Ignoring Daily Body-Fat Numbers
I hid the body-fat tile on my smart scale for 30 days and watched only a 7-day rolling weight average. The results were calmer mornings and steadier habits, not worse progress.
The boring training week I can actually repeat
My training week is aggressively boring: a fixed 20-minute kettlebell session, rec softball as a social anchor, wildcard days that can be nothing, and recovery as the actual plan.
The metric I stopped letting ruin my morning
For months my HRV score decided if I was allowed to feel competent that day. A 90-day experiment changed it from a verdict into one quiet input among many.
The health dashboard I check less now
My health dashboard went from decision tool to confirmation ritual. Once I stripped it back to a few blunt metrics, the excuses disappeared and the habits improved.
The Morning a Yellow Recovery Score Overruled Me
One yellow 43% recovery score forced me to cancel squats, move a session, and change how I schedule training. That weekend turned HRV data into a traffic-light rule set.
Why I Switched from Whoop Back to Apple Watch
Whoop gave me beautiful recovery scores, but kept my best insights locked in its own app. Apple Watch is dumber and messier, but it fits my actual life and tools.
Tools
Why my posts now start with five bullets
I stopped asking my automation to invent posts from topics and started feeding it five ugly bullets from real life instead. The system did not change much, but the writing did.
The client code I will not paste into an AI tool
A practical line between “helpful AI code review” and “leaking your client’s business model,” based on operational privacy rather than legal fine print.
The Schema.org Markup Every Client Site Should Ship With
The structured data I ship on almost every client project fits on a single page. This is the JSON-LD I actually deploy, not theory.
Shooting With Restraint: iPhone, Lightroom, And A Component Mindset
Photography got way better for me when I dropped the gear chase and treated images like components in a system: shot on an iPhone, finished in Lightroom, used on the web.
Killing CalendarBridge and RankPill: An Honest Audit of My Setapp Stack
I killed CalendarBridge and RankPill, then audited my entire Setapp stack. This is how I trimmed the bloat without losing any real capability.
The Tower Workflow That Keeps My Mac Studio And MacBook Air Perfectly In Sync
How I keep a Mac Studio and a MacBook Air in sync using Tower, Git and a few strict rules, so I can jump between desk and couch without merge hell.
Build in Public
20 Years of richardlemon.com – A Website Grows Up
What the Wayback Machine remembers about you – and what it says about where you're going.
Lazy Loading Images Almost Tanked My Core Web Vitals
I broke my own Core Web Vitals by being clever with lazy loading. Here is the ugly LCP data, what actually fixed it, and the image loading rules I use now.
The Accessibility Audit That Slapped Me Awake
An external accessibility audit tore apart a client site I was proud of. Here is what they caught that I completely missed, and how it changed my workflow.
The Git hygiene workflow keeping ideebv-2026 lean
How I keep the ideebv-2026 repo lean using git filter-repo, strict ignores, and backup pruning. Real commands, no theory.
The CSS Specificity Bug That Wasted 3 Hours And Needed 1 Line
A real CSS specificity war story from a client project: three hours of confusion, one stubborn layout bug, and a single-line fix that solved it.
Why I Rebuilt My Portfolio Navigation From Scratch (Twice)
I thought my portfolio nav was smart. Then I used it on an actual phone. This is what broke, what I rebuilt, and what I will never ship again without testing.
Thoughts
20 Years of richardlemon.com – A Website Grows Up
What the Wayback Machine remembers about you – and what it says about where you're going.
A New Chapter: Biohacking My Way to a Healthier Me
As the year ends, I’m excited to share the beginning of my weight loss journey—a journey I’m
Three things I delete from almost every AI draft
When I use AI for first drafts, I spend most of my editing time deleting: fake origin stories, forced AI angles, and tidy morals the model invented for me.
The practice that fell apart after ten minutes
A beautifully structured 90-minute U12 baseball practice fell apart in ten minutes. The fix was not a better spreadsheet, but a one-sentence pocket plan.
When I Stop Correcting a Young Player
How I decide when another coaching cue will help a young player and when it will only create noise, freeze them up, and block real learning.
What I Write Down During a Youth Baseball Game
During youth baseball games, I let the app track the score and use my notebook for the human data: faces, failed drills, invisible players, and one actionable line per kid.